Yes, I know I’m behind with my weekly blog, but I find the less I have to do, the less I do.  When I have dozens of things to do in a day I can do them easily, but as the ennui connected with January settles in, I can’t do a damn thing.  However, for once I’m going to enjoy it and revel in slowing down for a while.

I was enthralled by the January Martha Stewart magazine.  I spent a couple of hours browsing through it, and then went through it again, removing interesting recipes.  There seem to be quite a few recipes that I want to try.  For one, there’s a beautiful recipe for eggplant parmigiana that I plan to try, but using chicken breasts instead of the eggplant.

Perhaps as a result of Martha’s craft suggestions, I took out a needlepoint that I’d started last year.  It’s very pretty, consisting of the usual jumble of pansies on a cream background.  I don’t know what happened to me, but on Sunday I spent over eight hours working on that thing!

I told one of the women at the gym about it, feeling embarrased, but fortunately she said she’s just signed up for a knitting class!  What a madcap, adventurous group of women we are at the gym, eh?  To their credit, a couple of members are taking pole dancing to spice things up a bit.  So far, I’ve declined their invitation to join.

My friend Kathy invited a few of us ‘girls’ over to her house on Saturday late afternoon for appies and drinks.  She has a gorgeous house, with a panoramic view of Okanagan Lake.  Her furniture comes from Jordans Interiors, and there’s not a speck of dust to be found on the marble counters.

I’m telling you this so that you can appreciate how she feels when she comes to this pet and big-footed male-damaged house.  You can imagine what the cats have done to the furniture, and what the kids and their friends have done to the general interior of the house.

Which reminds me of the big plans I have for the yard in the spring (notice how I’m ignoring the paint jobs that need to be done inside the house).  Because I no longer get any amusement from running in and out of the house every ten minutes from May to September, moving sprinklers, I want to try xeriscaping.

Here in the Valley there’s a great resource in the Okanagan Xeriscaping Association.  I’ll probably have to take one of their introductory classes just to figure out how to reduce some of the English garden I’m currently emptying Okanagan Lake to water.

All I can say in my defense is that when I moved here and started gardening, the garden centres were full of all of these madly beautiful water-loving plants that we now all have.  However, if I can get used to some of the xeriscape flowers, I’ll survive the change-over.